Saturday, 15 March 2014

YoungMinds Vs 'School Stress' | 'Ad'

- Rewrite the rules (campaign tackling school stress)YoungMinds recently posted a link to this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2579267/Lessons-meditation-Schools-teach-pupils-mindfulness-help-concentrate-deal-stress.html#ixzz2vrVRqSEc and so... here is the personal post connected with the issue...I'm not sure this post will be up to par with the others because it took a lot of thinking for me to decide what to write; when I thought about stress at school there was nothing that jumped to mind from personal experience.The stress I had in school was not the usual type and I want this post to be relatable so I've desperately grabbed at memories to find some sort of normal school stress...I think the most stressed I got was for my GCSE exams. I was suspended from School about three weeks before them and part of the suspension conditions were that I couldn't attend revision classes and had to sit my exams separate to the rest of my year group. My Mum told me that whilst she was at work I had to go about my day as though I were still in school, using 'lesson' time to revise and having a break and lunchtime. I could've easily just bluffed my way through it because there was no way for her to know I had actually been doing my work... Except my results. I figured, I'd disappointed her (she will say I never have and never will) enough by being suspended and failing my GCSEs would just be a step too far. I didn't really consider that I'd need the grades for a decent job because I didn't imagine I had a future now that the 'trauma' was over. So, I revised. And when they told me I couldn't go in to put my Textiles work up on display, my Mum fought my corner in arguing that if I failed because of how the teacher had chosen to present my work then she'd make a stand. They let me go in to check the display. She also helped me when a certain teacher had 'offered' to personally give my media exam prep to the teacher and failed to do so, so that when the exam came around I was going in blind; with no idea as to whether I had understood it right. Finally, Mum fought for my exams to be properly organised. For three exams, the same certain teacher interrupted them to the point where my invigilator told the exam co-ordinator and after my Mum told them the teacher was responsible for my grades, it was agreed I could sit my exams in a community centre across the road from the school. The day I told my Mum that I'd passed all nine GCSEs with 7 C's and 2 B's was one of the proudest moments in my life.Another thing I will say about school stress though is that with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) they say the more psychotic symptoms e.g. the hallucinations etc are induced by stress and not some sort of psychosis and chemical imbalance so there is some discussion about whether the beginning of my auditory hallucinations was brought on by the stress of my A Level exams. You hear all the time about students cracking under exam pressure and high parental expectations so I guess my advice is that if you feel things are getting too much, take a moment for yourself. In this Hospital we get taught this skill called 'self-soothe' and it's literally just taking a little while to do something for yourself, something that you'll like and enjoy. And not to do it as a 'reward.'http://www.youngmindsvs.org.uk/